***Triggers – (Fairly Graphic) Child and Animal Abuse, Stalking, General Trauma***
I am being plagued by bad dreams at the minute, at least on the occasions on which I am actually granted the ‘escapism’ of slumber. I’ve been trying to keep some track of them by scribbling down details when I inevitably wake up in a cold sweat, but it’s been difficult; it’s very hard to do anything other than try to ground yourself in whatever sphere of reality you find yourself in. Still, I’ve been trying my best, and have ergo managed to spot a few recurring themes.
- Mentalism. Voices, borderline behaviour, panics, suicide, etc, yadda.
- NHS/Trust fails. No explanation required.
- The fact that I believe I am a failure.
On that point, it’s worth noting a recurring dream that leaves me waking up in unparalleled terror, even though the subject matter is not per se petrifying – it’s just kind of unfortunate and sad. I am back in sixth form at school – the only moderately positive years I had during that time of my life – but I am going to see my language teacher, Mike, just before my oral exam, to get the questions for same and to try to develop answers. The problem is, I’ve been off school and in particular that class for months (I was off school a lot during my pre-sixth form years). I cannot pass this A Level subject. It is simply not possible; I do not have even a fraction of the knowledge required. Yet I go to him anyway, fearful of how he’ll react, because we have a long-held mutual fondness and respect – and now I’ve let him down so significantly. I should have been his star pupil; instead, I will inevitably be his worst. The trepidation with which I approach his room cannot be quantified. I get to the door, and I wait in horror – both related to his probable reaction to me, and to my certain failure in the impending exams…and then I wake. I wake convinced it is real, and my heart sinks with dread and sadness, until A speaks to me, or until I have had time to thoroughly examine my surroundings and note rationally that it has been nine years since I left school.
Other similar dreams of failure have seen me meeting public figures such as the Queen or William Hague (!) and making a complete and utter twat of myself in front of them, despite wishing to appear personable, intelligent and courteous. I always wake, again convinced of the reality of the dreams, in sickened self-disgust at how useless and pathetic I am.
- Trauma. I experience what would be, in the real world, traumatic experiences.
The expected players are rarely, if ever, in situ. No vicious dreams of Paedo, faceless and/or moustached gang rapists, my father, bullies, evil teachers, Hideous Ex or anyone of that ilk. Instead, the perpetrators of the horrid stuff tend to be random people I don’t know – creations of my subconscious in other words, doubtless intended as metaphors for others.
In one dream that has recurred a few times to date, I am being stalked. My life is under genuine threat from the person responsible, and I make constant desperate attempts to flee, which are always unsuccessful. Usually there is a protective figure in the equation too – so far it’s been Disraeli (yes, let’s anthropomorphise cars some more), Mum or C (the latter taking up this role well after I last saw him). The protector has varying degrees of success in his/her attempts to protect me; Mum had nearly slain the attacker, but he eventually gets past her (although, thankfully, he does not harm her in the process). Disraeli tries his level best, dear love him, but eventually – at the last moment – his accelerator fail. I cannot go anywhere, and the stalker is gaining on me. C, in almost perfect symbolism, starts to fend off the stalker – then simply gives up.
I always wake up just as I realise my death at the hands of the stalker is inevitable. As with everything else of this ilk, I awake convinced that these dreams represent reality. Indeed, I’ve woken from this one believing that I am actually dead – existing in some horrible sort of afterlife – having been murdered by the stalker.
Of course, whilst this one is quite traumatic, it is subtly narcissistic too. A stalker. Who the fuck do I think I am? Lady fucking GaGa? (Not that I’d want to be, mind you. I resent the mad bitch for citing her one of her influences as Queen, and indeed for naming herself after one of their songs, when she is nothing like the aforesaid Gods of Rock. I wouldn’t mind if she was good, if she in any way vaguely approximated their absolute excellence, but pretty much anyone who first came to the public’s attention after about 1990 is absolutely shite. Bah humbug, you say? Fuck that, I was born old).
A new one has today entered the fray. This one is about abuse, including but not limited to sexual abuse – but it is not directed at me (well, one arguable incidence aside). The random people responsible for this abuse are known by me, and for a while I am able to infiltrate their ranks. I know what they’re doing, and I want to stop it. I’m pretty rubbish at espionage, though, as quite the opposite seems to happen: they’re abusing both animals and children, and to my disgust some of their ‘samples’ of both end up in my house, their little bodies contorted and virtually vacuumed into these horrible, tiny containers, ready to be ‘used’ by the abusive gang. There seems to be little I can do to stop the placement of the containers in my house.
I go to their headquarters, and despite my apparently demonstrable allegiance, they are somehow suspicious of me. They order me to a cellar; there is a single man there, surrounding by containers full of helpless puppies and children. I am disgusted, but I hide it well. I try to casually talk the man into releasing his captives – I don’t remember the reasons I give, but they ostensibly relate to the potential benefits to him and the gang, rather than that of the victims, as I surmise such reasoning is all they are likely to listen to. He appears to find the suggestion amusing, and proceeds to ask if he can ‘practise’ on me. To my (disguised) horror, I acquiesce.
Back in my own house, I am trying to work out how I can involve the police in my (mostly failed) spying operation without using the phone. How utterly, unspeakably, laughably wretched is that?! The matter is taken out of my hands, however, when the police arrive at my house unannounced, a warrant to search my premises in their possession. Unfortunately for me, I still have containers - lots of them. I wonder if I have been framed by the group that I infiltrated - after all, on the last visit they did regard me with palpable chariness. As the police enter my house, I know I am to be arrested and almost certainly imprisoned. Imprisoned as a nonce, what’s more; not exactly a barrel of laughs, by any stretch of the imagination. I wake.
In this one, I woke-fell asleep-woke several times. My mind – my treacherous, nefarious, nasty little mind – insisted on returning to this disgusting fantasy in order that it could play it out to its conclusion. Note the yet-again-narcissism towards the end of the dream: I am distraught that I am about to go to jail, not relieved as fuck that the children and animals that I am ‘keeping’ are to be released.
I was also interested to note that my home in this bollocks had been the childhood residence of my old friend, Louise. I don’t know if there’s a psychoanalytical point in there somewhere, but it seemed interesting nevertheless. The headquarters of the gang was a traditional but hidden pub beneath the central streets of the conurbation in which I reside. The entrance was through a fast food outlet, of all places!
I may add to this entry as I note or recall more weird dreams. As someone fairly unversed in Freud, I don’t know what, if anything, some of the more bizarre ones are meant to exemplify. But it’s interesting to look at them nonetheless.
(Random aside: I am applying for all my psychological and psychiatric notes since 1998 in preparation for the meeting with the Trust of Evil. Mwhahaha! It is going to give them so much work 
And it will be interesting, if in all probability difficult, reading. More information to follow, as and when).
New Post » #Dreams and #Nightmares http://j.mp/dTpTwW #childsexabuse #PTSD #borderline #trauma #abuse #anxiety
New Post: Dreams and Nightmares http://bit.ly/dTpTwW #borderline #PTSD
*thousands of hugs* Nightmares suck. I’m sorry and I wish I could fix them.
Don’t know if the dreams ever go. Fucking bastarding dreams. On the plus side, Medical note fun is in a league of it’s own. I suggest a 7 hour presentation, videotaped, and then sent to the Trust as “Pre-read” for the meeting. Go diva on them “I will NOT be meeting with you, unless you can tell me what colour socks I was wearing on the Fourth of December 2001″ In fact, make them sit an exam at the end, or better yet, get X-factor style buzzers, and every time they start wibbling, honk them off the stage…
New Post: Dreams and Nightmares http://bit.ly/hHs7PS #borderline #PTSD
Actually, you don’t have to be Somebody to be stalked. You just have to have affected the Wrong Person.
When I was a senior in university, I briefly dated a man who my hormones must have thought was interesting. I think I broke things off around the end of November. However, he just didn’t get it. He kept calling me at my dorm, trying to get me to marry him ASAP, because he wanted to join the USNavy, and according to him, after he enlisted, he wouldn’t be able to marry for either 2 or 4 years, can’t remember.
Starting around 6 or 7 pm each bloody night, he’d be calling with the same useless idea. If I hung up, he called back immediately. He simply did not get it that I had dumped him and that I had no interest in marrying him. He was the sort who wanted you to run things, but let him take all the credit. Sorry, no.
I tried to get the uni operators (this is in the mid 70s) to keep his calls from going through, but this was before the term “stalking” was common, and long before it was a criminal offense.
I kept my phone off the hook pretty much the entire month of December, unless I was making a call myself–it was the only way I had to shut him out.
I can’t remember when I was told by the receptionist downstairs that there was a box of flowers waiting for me. I took a circuitous route–she must have said who they were from–in case he was there. Thankfully, he wasn’t. The receptionist started to hand me the flowers, but I told her to toss them in the bin. Didn’t I want them? They were so pretty. No, I don’t care what happens to them, but I don’t want them anywhere near me. She took them home, sure I was off my rocker.
Sometime in the spring, he called to say he was bringing my cat–who wasn’t allowed in the dorms, and from whom I thought I might be permanently parted, after we split up–on a certain day, or at a certain time (yup, I forget). Well, he showed up just as I was getting on my bicycle to go to work–not at all when he was supposed to. Mithril, barely out of kittenhood, looked scared out of her mind. I took her from him and went off in a different direction than my room was, because I didn’t trust him not to follow. I was able to find a place for her until I graduated and found a place to live.
After I graduated, I stayed in the same town–I love being in an academic environment/community, and I didn’t have any money to afford moving. We had a mutual friend, and E gave G my phone number, because of a mistaken idea that we belonged together or some such idiocy. At that time, in CA, you couldn’t get your number changed for any reason without it costing around $50, and if I changed my number, even though I might ask him not to, E’d give the new number to G. G would call every so often, out of the blue, from wherever he was, I’d hang up and not answer the phone should it ring again (CA also didn’t have caller-ID until very late). I would shake for half an hour after these calls. I’d ask him not to call–I’d tell M to tell him not to call, but nothing worked. This went on for over 10 years. I started having recurring nightmares about trying to get away from G, and while each time I got farther and farther away, I could never completely escape.
At some point, E was seeing someone not too far from me, and G was back in the state. G did apologize, I’ll give him that, but it didn’t make up for those years of stalking. At one point he called me again, and I had had it. I said that I had nothing good to remember from when we were dating, none whatsoever from the years of stalking, and we had nothing in common now. Why are you still calling me?
He said, I don’t know, hung up, and I never heard from him again. I did hear a few years after E had followed E to Minneapolis, that G had a particularly fast deteriorating form of Multiple Sclerosis. I couldn’t for the life of me find a reason to contact him in a last farewell gesture. He didn’t deserve it from me.
I hope you never are stalked–and hope those dreams stop soonesst.
I hate dreams I cannot understand, and I seem to get a lot of them of late. Applying for your notes from 1998, god the hospital trust are going to love you! x
Nightmares. I don’t remember a time not having them.
Even at a very young age, my dreams were filled with violence, failure, greif, tragedy, helplessness, horror, gore and death. I watched my mother and father die more times than I care to remember; came close to death or serious injury nearly every night; and was chased and tortured by the demons – metaphorical and real – without any reprieve. Guns were held to my head; people I loved were devoured by quicksand; monsters lurked in the shadows; the queens and princes that enchanted other girls my age were the evil of mine; I was wrongfully accused of murder; and nighttime encounters with kidnappers, murders, and rapists were the norm. Waking up screaming, painting and in cold sweats was not – and still is not – uncommon.
The nightmares range – both in past and present – from the realistic to the absolutely bizarre; from the upsetting to the horrific; from failure to the worst tragedies and trauma. So many of my childhood and adolescent friends found sleep to be reprieve; but to me, it was just a darker and more dramatic continuation of my waking life. They were – are – always so real, too; as if they had actually occurred. Indeed, sometimes it can be a struggle to separate the two: many of my childhood dreams are remembered as clearly as memories.
One of the most horrifically vivid dreams occurred during the first night of my second stay in a psychiatric hospital – I was fourteen at the time.
It was nighttime, and there was no moon, no stars. The sky was void of any light, and was instead suffocated by storm clouds and the wrath they brought. Despite living in a state that was as bipolar in its weather as my mind was with its mood, I had never seen it rain this hard. The power wasn’t working. I was home alone and, suffering from the paranoia I did, was scared. Unable to take it any longer, I decided to walk down the street to my friend’s while I waited for my mom to drive home. If I recall, she was already on her way.
Though my actual road has no sidewalks, in this dream, it did. I began to run up it, though, towards my friend’s. Rain poured down all around me, and the terror was a given. Before I could make it past the third of fourth house, however, I saw a lone man walking in the opposite direction (towards me) on the opposite side of the street. He was giant-like, in overalls, disheveled, repulsing, and I knew he was out to hurt me.
Unable to scream, I began to run back to my house. I don’t know why I didn’t run to a neighbor’s – at that moment, I believe I was afraid of them all suddenly morphing into monsters. I ran; but he was quicker. In unnatural speed for a man his size, he crossed the street and was upon me. Lightning flashed, thunder boomed, and he lunged. I think he smiled.
That’s when I woke up.
To this day, I break down even thinking about it – that’s how real it felt (feels?).
I hate that feeling of losing control and lack of awareness associated with sleep. Of not being able to wake up on request; of not being aware it is just a dream. I fear I will never wake up; will be stuck in a nightmare; or killed in one.
I now have panic attacks at night and severely fear sleep. I only submit when I’m too sick and exhausted not too. Somniphobia, they call it.
I wish you luck with your nightmares. May peace come soon.
[...] wrote about being plagued by bad dreams, and
analysing them to discover the recurring themes — Dreams and
Nightmares: …dreams of failure have seen me meeting
public figures such as the Queen or William Hague [...]